Album Review

Pete Fountain has spent a lifetime playing and promoting Dixieland jazz, making it possible for people who otherwise have little awareness of it to cop a casual taste and enjoy the thrill of New Orleans polyphony. Fountain's Best of Dixieland series includes reissues of his own work and that of Al Hirt as well as a superb anthology of traditional jazz clarinetists. Fountain's Louis Armstrong volume focuses mainly on Armstrong's live recordings from the '40s and '50s, with the 1927 "Weary Blues" and a 1936 "Mahogany Hall Stomp" thrown in for historical ballast. This is a nice little introduction to Louis Armstrong. It features his trumpet, which is more than can be said for some compilations which fixate upon his twilight years as a beloved vocalist. This is a taste. This is only a taste. And there are hundreds more great Louis Armstrong performances where these came from.

Biography

Born: 04 August 1901 in New Orleans, LA

Genre: Jazz

Years Active: '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s

Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music's history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music,...